>That is a lie.

It might be useful to note the difference between “that is a lie” and “that is not my experience”.

The debate is hugely entertaining, in the same kind of way that the Wars of the Roses were. At some point, though, it might be useful to note that software development and engineering are governed by heuristics–fallible methods for solving problems, making decisions, and accomplishing tasks. Heuristics are presumed to be fallible, context-dependent, constrained by circumstance, enabled by available resources, used by someone with sufficient skill and judgment to make reasonable choices, and conducive to learning. TDD is a heuristic approach to software development: often helps; might fail.

—Michael B.

It’s one of them isn’t it? A storm in a teacup? Sam, the author of the other article (and I have tried to log in to tell him but his site is broken) is, I think, a bit mixed up. Here is an example: “and you’ll often find test-driven developers more willing to tweak their final code to match a flawed test than actually fix the test and change their initial design.”

That is a lie. I have seen many people, testers, managers and developers, drop tests, ignore them, comment them out and ignore much more evidence just to push a project through a gate on a spreadsheet. This is a problem with human nature, not test-driven-developers. I know, because I use test-driven development and I have never changed code to make a flawed test work.

I won’t come back on every point, I value my time too much. But, I will say this, in regards to the religious nature of Agile and TDD, he is right (it’s a shame that he then does what all religious zealots do. That’s to say, he set up an artificial, black-and-white argument, putting himself on one side and his, for want of a better word, enemies on the other. His comparison to Dawkins is powerful. As an evolutionary biologist Dawkins should be focussing on why we keep reinventing religion and asking what, if any, is the evolutionary pay back of religion? Sam, like Dawkins, is focussing on the wrong thing. Dawkins makes my life as an atheist hard because now the whole world hates us and won’t listen. His rhetoric is too strong).

The Americans are somewhat more zealous then we are over here in Europe. I am thinking of people like Bob Martin and Ron Jeffries. Martin’s writing I like, Jeffries I don’t. They sell TDD quite hard, and I think in a very evangelistic manner. The foot soldiers then pick this up, drive the whole world mad with their self-righteous rhetoric, and drive people like poor Sam mad. He, in an instant of rage (and good for him for having the courage to question what he sees as dogma), becomes what he beholds – uninformed and ignorant about this matter. However, if his central thesis is that TDD needs less rhetoric and less religious overtones, I agree (but, of course agree with hardly anything else in his rant). I am well in with the agile lot and even I turn green when I hear bullshit spouting from un-informed religious warriors. Moral of the story, we are all engineers, let’s stick to engineering. Making stuff, breaking stuff, understanding our tools, writing rants that make people write responses and hence increase knowledge… Well done Sam, and well done Ben (who I mainly agree with).

And, I hope that we can log into Sam’s site and tell him about this feedback and maybe let him respond.

I have posted both sites on my site, so brace yourselves for a discussion. http://jamiedobson.co.uk/?q=node/65

Jamie.

greetz Jettro